(Semi-)Automated digital preservation archives for small institutions and private users

Large heritage institutions have been addressing the demands posed by digital preservation needs for some time. In contrast small institutions and private users are less prepared to handle these challenges. An increasing quantity of digital collections is held by small institution with limited know-how and awareness of digital preservation. Digital assets are becoming more important for an increasing number of institutions in the long run (e.g. legal obligation, intellectual property or business data). The limited resource in these institutions for archiving drives the need for new approaches of (fully or semi)-automated archiving systems. Research and development in the area of digital preservation is mainly done by memory institutions and large businesses. Consequently, the available tools, services and models are developed to meet the demands of professional environments. Automated archiving systems are needed for institutions with little professional know how in digital preservation. Important aspects are hiding the complexity of the processes, providing support for decision making and automated error handling. The automation of preservation workflows raises a number of research questions, e.g. metadata management, quality assurance and tolerable limit of loss of preservation actions and automated preservation planning

Personal Digital Archiving

Personal Digital Archiving ist ein wenig untersuchtes Forschungsgebiet, dass sich mit der Archivierung privater Daten durch private Anwender beschäftigt. Individuelle Archivierungsstrategien, eingeschränkte technische und organisatorische Kompetenzen und emotionale Entscheidungen verhindern automatisierte Archivierungshandlungen, wie sie für die institutionelle Langzeitarchivierung definiert sind. Diese Arbeit untersucht, welche Konzepte der institutionellen Langzeitarchivierung in skalierter Form auch durch private Anwender adaptiert werden können und wie diese in Deutschland durch Bibliotheken in ihrer Funktion als Experten für die institutionelle Langzeitarchivierung, aber auch als direkte Schnittstelle zum archivierenden Nutzer vermittelt werden können. Vorgeschlagen wird die Erstellung allgemeiner Informationen unter Beteiligung von nestor sowie die Vermittlung innerhalb von Veranstaltungen zur Informationskompetenz an wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken und die praktische Umsetzung durch den Aufbau gemeinschaftlicher Repositorien an öffentlichen Bibliotheken.Personal digital archiving is an underresearched area of digital preservation that deals with the preservation of personal digital objects through individuals. Varying archiving practices, limited technical and organizational competencies as well as affective actions prevent the establishment of formal archiving standards. The thesis explores how digital preservation practices can be scaled down to benefit individuals‘ archiving needs and the role of German libraries as operating instances in digital preservation and information literacy. The distribution of basic archiving information for the general public through the nationwide nestor preservation cooperative is recommended as well as teaching personal digital archiving as a part of information literacy in higher education and the establishment of community archives through public libraries

Report from the Digital Curation Curriculum Symposium (DigCCurr) 2009

The second Digital Curation Curriculum Symposium was held on April 1-3, 2009, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with the theme "Digital Curation Practice, Promise and Prospects". The Symposium featured sessions dealing with issues from the cutting edge of digital curation research, while others showcased recent developments in digital curation tools. At the same time, the Symposium also considered how to equip the new generation of information professionals with the necessary skills to put this research and development into practice

The safeguard of audio collections: a computer science based approach to quality control--the case of the sound archive of the arena di verona

In the field of multimedia, very little attention is given to the activities involved in the preservation of audio documents. At the same time, more and more archives storing audio and video documents face the problem of obsolescing and degrading media, which could largely benefit from the instruments and the methodologies of research in multimedia. This paper presents the methodology and the results of the Italian project REVIVAL, aimed at the development of a hardware/software platform to support the active preservation of the audio collection of the Fondazione Arena di Verona, one of the finest in Europe for the operatic genre, with a special attention on protocols and tools for quality control. On the scientific side, the most significant objectives achieved by the project are (i) the setup of a working environment inside the archive, (ii) the knowledge transfer to the archival personnel, (iii) the realization of chemical analyses on magnetic tapes in collaboration with experts in the fields of materials science and chemistry, and (iv) the development of original open-source software tools. On the cultural side, the recovery, the safeguard, and the access to unique copies of unpublished live recordings of artists the calibre of Domingo and Pavarotti are of great musicological and economical value

Education alignment

This essay reviews recent developments in embedding data management and curation skills into information technology, library and information science, and research-based postgraduate courses in various national contexts. The essay also investigates means of joining up formal education with professional development training opportunities more coherently. The potential for using professional internships as a means of improving communication and understanding between disciplines is also explored. A key aim of this essay is to identify what level of complementarity is needed across various disciplines to most effectively and efficiently support the entire data curation lifecycle

Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works

In a rapidly changing technological environment, the difficult task of ensuring long-term access to digital information is increasingly important. The Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works presents over 650 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation. This selective bibliography covers digital curation and preservation copyright issues, digital formats (e.g., data, media, and e-journals), metadata, models and policies, national and international efforts, projects and institutional implementations, research studies, services, strategies, and digital repository concerns. Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2011; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Cite as: Bailey, Charles W., Jr. Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works. Houston: Digital Scholarship, 2012

Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works

In a rapidly changing technological environment, the difficult task of ensuring long-term access to digital information is increasingly important. The Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works presents over 650 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation. This selective bibliography covers digital curation and preservation copyright issues, digital formats (e.g., data, media, and e-journals), metadata, models and policies, national and international efforts, projects and institutional implementations, research studies, services, strategies, and digital repository concerns. Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2011; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Cite as: Bailey, Charles W., Jr. Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works. Houston: Digital Scholarship, 2012

Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections

Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections examines digital forensics and its relevance for contemporary research. The applicability of digital forensics to archivists, curators, and others working within our cultural heritage is not necessarily intuitive. When the shared interests of digital forensics and responsibilities associated with securing and maintaining our cultural legacy are identified—preservation, extraction, documentation, and interpretation, as this report details—the correspondence between these fields of study becomes logical and compelling.Council on Library and Information Resource

Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation

The "Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation" (ANADP) conference was held at the National Library of Estonia, from May 23-25, 2011. More than 125 delegates from more than 20 countries were gathered in Tallinn, Estonia and explored how to create and sustain international collaborations to support the preservation of digital cultural memory. This publication contains a collection of peer-reviewed essays that were developed by conference panels and attendees in the months following ANADP

Repositório digital pessoal semântico baseado na “cloud”

Doutoramento em InformáticaAo longo do tempo os indivíduos procuraram sempre formas de preservar o conhecimento, recordações e experiencias de vida. A busca por suportes estáveis que possam preservar as recordações dos efeitos da passagem do tempo leva à projeção das mesmas sobre objetos físicos. Estes objetos eventualmente são agregados em coleções que representam partes das vidas dos seus criadores, e que que podem ser partilhadas com outras pessoas. O uso generalizado das tecnologias da informação, conjuntamente com a sua simplicidade trouxe consigo uma mudança de paradigma, levando a que muitas interações que poderiam criar objetos físicos sobre os quais seriam projetadas recordações passassem do mundo físico para o mundo digital passando a criar objetos digitais, sobre os quais também podem ser projetadas recordações, tal como o que acontece com os seus equivalentes físicos. Devido a sua natureza digital estes objetos são simples de criar, manipular, duplicar e partilhar. Estas características colocam-nos numa posição em que podem ser gerados facilmente, usado para transmitir conteúdo aparentemente trivial que é depois partilhado e prontamente esquecido. No entanto, apesar destes objetos poderem passar a incorporar memorias, a combinação do excesso de confiança nas suas características intrínsecas e de uma atitude que convida ao esquecimento acabam por impedir este desfecho, o que pode levar a que no futuro os indivíduos percam o acesso a estes objetos. O trabalho desenvolvido ao longo desta tese foca-se sobre este problema, propondo resolve-lo com a criação de um sistema de repositórios digitais pessoas para a recolha de informação sobre o conteúdo pessoal de cada individuo. Em vez de se focar na recolha do conteúdo propriamente dita, um repositório digital pessoal dá prioridade à recolha de metadados sobre o conteúdo (desde que este não esteja em perigo iminente) de forma a no futuro poder guiar os indivíduos de volta aos serviços na “nuvem” onde o conteúdo ainda reside no seu contexto original. Em cenários pessoais não é viável recorrer a pessoal especializado para proceder a recolha e seleção destes dados. Para mitigar este problema, os dados são recolhidos o mais cedo e próximo da origem quanto possível por agentes de recolha. Estes foram desenhados de forma a minimizar a intrusão nas rotinas dos seus utilizadores, ao mesmo tempo que oferecem serviços complementares que podem ser utilizados de forma independente do repositório digital pessoal, fomentando assim a adoção do uso destes agentes. Este trabalho também descreve uma proposta de extensão ao modelo CIDOC/CRM, utilizado para classificar e organizar a informação recolhida. Esta extensão foi criada devido à necessidade de dotar o modelo de novas entidades e propriedades destinadas a lidar com objetos digitais e cenários pessoais.Throughout time individuals have always sought forms to preserve their knowledge, memories and life experiences. Physical objects provide a medium upon which individuals are able to project their memories, in an attempt that they remain in a stable support better able to cope with the passage of time. Physical objects eventually coalesce into a collection that comes to represent part of its owners’ lives and that can eventually be passed on to others. Widespread use of information technologies, coupled with their perceived ease of use has shifted many interactions that would end up producing external memory objects from the physical to the digital realm. As with their physical counterparts, digital objects can also be used by individuals to project their memories. Due to their digital nature, these objects are simple to create, produce, manipulate, duplicate and share. These traits place them into a position where they can be generated without too much effort to convey what might appear to be trivial content, readily shared and forgotten afterwards. Though, through memory projection they could become part of their creator’s legacy, overconfidence in their reproducibility and being forgotten can prevent them from being so. This deprives their creators from part of their lives that, in spite of appearing trivial at first, might acquire a deeper meaning with the passage of time. The work done throughout this thesis addresses this issue by proposing the creation of personal digital repositories to collect information regarding personal content. Instead of focusing on collecting the content itself, the personal digital repository prioritises gathering metadata about the content (when not immediately at risk) in order to lead its owner back to the “cloud” applications where the content can still be found in its original context. In personal scenarios it is not feasible to rely on trained personnel to help with content gathering and organisation. To mitigate this issue, content is collected as soon as possible by collection agents. These are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, also offering additional services that can be used even without the personal digital repository in order to encourage their adoption. This creates an intertwined ecosystem where the content collection agents feed the personal digital repository and can in turn use previously collected content to support their additional services. This work also describes a proposed extension to the CIDOC/CRM model, used to classify and organise the collected information. The extension was created due to a perceived gap in the CIDOC/CRM model when it came to dealing with digital objects